


Signed With Love

by JulyStorms



Series: Let the World Burn Through You [8]
Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Rekka no Ken
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-17
Updated: 2015-11-17
Packaged: 2018-05-02 01:41:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5229071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JulyStorms/pseuds/JulyStorms
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her plan is to forget about him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Signed With Love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MarkoftheAsphodel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarkoftheAsphodel/gifts).



> #21: "The way you said 'I love you'...over your shoulder." Requested by MarkoftheAsphodel on Tumblr.

It’s funny that he says it at all, really, but that he does so as he’s leaving almost hurts.

Almost, because she’s learned to school her emotions better than that. Nothing can touch her anymore; she’s been through enough: felt enough, hurt enough. Lived enough, too, probably, but to give up the ghost now would be the coward’s way out.

Besides, she has her sisters to think of, now—again. For the first time in years they’ll be together.

She doesn’t need to think about romance—or the lack of it, as she doubts Sain feels love or anything of the sort for her. Just because he’s said it doesn’t mean it’s true. It’s not what he says that matters, she tells herself, watching his retreating back; it’s what he _does_.

Or _doesn’t_ do, as that may be all the more telling.

* * *

 

Her plan is to forget about him.

It’s easy, at least in theory. She has a great many things to do, all of which will require time and great attention to detail—all of which will be quite draining, at the end of the day.

But the heavy burden of personally reporting the deaths of her subordinates to their surviving relatives isn’t enough to forget him, which she thinks is cruel and unfair—insensitive. As the wing commander of her unit, she’s privy to a lot of information when she bothers to keep an ear open. Fiora always keeps an ear open, so she knows which of her subordinates won’t be getting married next year, won’t be returning to their children and husbands, won’t be coming home again. That she thinks of Sain and his last-minute admission of affection immediately after she delivers this horrible news is unforgiveable.

“I think you’re being too hard on yourself this time,” Farina says, half-hanging out of her bed to grab something that’s rolled beneath it. “He’s kind’ve an idiot, no lie, but at least he’s a well-meaning idiot. A kind idiot, if you will.” She scrambles back up and flashes Fiora a grin. “Why wouldn’t you want to think of his dopey face after you’ve had to load off some sad news, huh? Everyone wants a little bit of happiness in their life, right?”

“Even you?” Fiora asks, biting the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling.

Farina pauses and pulls a face. “Well, yeah,” she manages after a moment, and plasters a smug sort of expression onto her face. “Just not _that_ kind of happiness—not for me. I’ll leave the romantic garbage to you.”

“How kind of you.”

“I’m a very generous person sometimes, you know.”

“Oh, I know,” Fiora says, and it’s true. Farina’s not what she pretends to be. She supposes they have that in common—have always had it in common though they’ve never wanted to admit it. She sinks down beneath her blankets, pulls them up to her chin, and smiles as Farina blows out the candle.

But she doesn’t fall asleep immediately, as she wishes to. Instead she thinks about her sister’s words—the suggestion that the sadness of her situation may have convinced her to want to think of happier things in the interim.

Sain is, she supposes, a happy thought. Though she can’t help but doubt that he would love her, he had always been kind and pleasant company. He was funny sometimes, too, she remembers, and he had learned how to make her laugh even when she was making a conscious effort not to let her expression show any mirth at all.

Perhaps Farina is right, though she claims to have no such romantic inclinations herself. Either she’s lying or she just knows about these things from experience. Fiora supposes the truth doesn’t matter; Farina ought to be allowed to keep her own secrets.

* * *

 

Even when life in Ilia returns to normalcy with Florina’s eventual arrival and all three sisters once again living in too-close quarters, Fiora doesn’t forget about Sain.

It’s not that she misses him more; she doesn’t. She’s not even sure that she misses him at all. But she thinks about him, sometimes, during long, cold flights, and more often when both of her sisters are away from home and she’s alone again, like before. The sound of the wind catching under the roof as it passes pushes her further under the covers. She never used to mind being alone. Or perhaps she was only too busy to notice it, before.

Still, she thinks most often about the day they parted, about the thick green late-spring grass and the way his horse had tossed her head when he pulled her away from it, about the straight line of his shoulders as he’d walked away, about the easy smile that had, this one time, made him look older instead of younger—and about the way he’d said that he loved her as if it actually meant something to him.

But of course it hadn’t. She’d be a fool to believe it did.

She’d be a fool to believe that he loved her, then, even though he’d said it convincingly enough. She’s just never been the sort of woman men fell in love with: not men like Sain, anyway, who liked to laugh and drink with friends and be silly.

They’re not at all alike; she can’t imagine his fancy, if he felt it at all, was ever anything but passing.

But the thoughts are nice, and so she wants to believe that he was telling the truth that day—that even if what he felt was a fleeting attraction now faded, he really had loved her, once.

* * *

 

Florina’s grin is mischievous and looks out of place on her face.

Fiora is immediately suspicious.

“I stopped by Edessa to see if any mail had come in,” she says, cheerfully, practically wriggling out of her boots.

“I take it there _was_ mail, then.”

“Yes! There is. Mail, I mean.” Her grin stretches.

“Who did you hear from that has you so excited?”

Florina’s giggles fill the air between them as she digs in her coat pocket and produces a sealed letter. “It’s not who _I’ve_ heard from,” she practically sings.

“Are you drunk?” Fiora asks her, only half-serious. Florina’s rarely in such high spirits as to be practically dancing.

“Only on my sister’s forthc-coming happiness!” The giggles return as she waves the letter.

Fiora takes it but doesn’t have to study it in any grand detail to know it’s from Sain. The handwriting is too elegant and purposeful to belong to anyone else.

Plus it’s addressed to _Darling Fiora, Angel of Ilia_.

“Well?” Florina prompts. “Aren’t you going to read it?”

“With you hovering about?”

Florina clamps a mittened hand to her mouth to cover her grin. “I won’t tell Farina,” she offers.

That’s as good as it’s going to get, and Fiora knows if she stalls much longer she’ll be setting a bad example; Florina’s already nervous enough around men, after all. It’d be a stupid mistake to make her think there was a reason to be afraid of a letter from one.

Though Sain is not the sort, she thinks, to try to break off something that never existed in the first place.

She opens the letter carefully, expecting to find some long, dreary, rambling thing. Instead, she finds just two sentences:

_I should like to come to Ilia in the summer to see you. Will you have me?_

Florina is using both mittens to cover her face, now. “Fiora,” she begs, “please say something!”

Fiora swallows hard, face flushing slightly. “Uh,” she says, and almost believes her response to be an intelligent one.

“Well, _gosh_ ,” Florina squeaks, pulling her hands away from her mouth. “That sounds promising.”

The teasing only makes her blush harder. “He can’t be serious,” is her eventual response.

“Oh, come now.” She shucks out of her coat and hangs it by the fire to dry. “I’m your sister, after all. Can’t you give me a real hint?”

Fiora clears her throat and folds the letter, tucking it into her own pocket. “Well, Florina,” she says, trying hard to keep from smiling, “he signed it _with love_.”


End file.
